Schaum's Outline of Italian Grammar, Third Edition (Schaum's Outline Series),   ISBN:9780071635295

Customer Rating: 

Living at the border to Italy (Austria) it is extremly important to speak and understand standard Italian. But unfortunately the way to learn the language by studying on one's own isn't supported by excellent grammatik drill books german-italian in the german speaking area. Therefore I started to train with Schaum's Outline and I'm extremely taken with it. A whole host of exercises assure oneself a great success. Best recommendations for this book !!

Customer Rating: 

Both this workbook as well as the Schaum's Outline of Italian Vocabulary are wonderful practice tools. They're packed with exercises and explanations, so I definitely recommend both to my students. It's not something to invest in unless you're seriously interested in learning the language. It's not a "quick crash course" in Italian that you would take before a trip, but rather an in-depth approach to the language.

Customer Rating: 

I've got a lot of Italian books and eserciziari (workbooks), but this one is special in at least 2 ways:
1. a lot of the italian words are marked for stress, which is absolutely necessary for more correct pronunciation; also the stress is done with a dot below which is much less visually distracting than, say accents. It is really easy to integrate the dot into the pronunciation
2. the exercises are interspersed into the explanations, rather than being all at the end of the chapter. This design helps because you know exactly what the exercises are about. Also it provides for more immediate reinforcement, and it keeps the learning in small steps ('baby steps').

Customer Rating: 

There are several mistakes which might confuse students. The editor really needs to update this book.

Customer Rating: 

I started learning Italian with Pimsleur and I nearly gave it up until I ran across this grammar. I mean, don't get me wrong, Pimsleur is really great, but... Italian is not the first foreign language I've learnt, and I'm used to (or maybe prefer) studying in a rather structured way, learning the grammar of the language while building conversational, reading and writing skills. So Pimsleur, which is based almost exclusively on listening and repetition, didn't work ideally for me...This book, however, was just the right thing that helped me move on and made the whole experience of learning with Pimsleur enjoyable. It is very user-friendly, highly suitable for beginners, and presented in a very clear way, making it very easy to find everything quickly. So whenever while listening to my Pimsleur CDs a "why" question arises in my mind, I open this book and find the answer quickly - really quickly.

Basically, I would recommend it to any beginner who started to learn Italian with one method or the other. Like I said, very clear, quite comprehensive and at the same time beginner-friendly. Even if you started learning Italian this week, this grammar is for you, because everything is laid-out in plain English. I believe it will also provide me with a convenient way to bridge the gap after I finish with Pimsleur to move on to more advanced speaking, reading and writing.